The field was the site of the once-thriving 1700s town of Ninety Six, which in 1781 had about a dozen homes, a courthouse, and a jail. After Lieutenant Colonel Cruger arrived in 1780, he fortified the wooden town within a stockade and had a bank and parapet built around it and strengthened with abatis. During the siege of 1781, many Loyalist families from the backcountry, fleeing Greene's advancing Patriot army, took refuge there among Cruger's troops and sick or wounded soldiers carried out from the Star Fort, living in constant fear of Patriot gunfire and dwindling food and water supplies. After the Patriot's defeat, Cruger was ordered to evacuate because the British command considered Ninety Six too far from Charleston and too deep in hostile territory to be of further value. In July 1781, Cruger's men, accompanied by Loyalist families, abandoned the village and burned it to the ground to deny Patriots further use of the site.